Snail robot excretes sticky mucus that helps it crawl up slopes

A mucus-excreting robot with a single large foot can effectively imitate the way snails crawl over surfaces – even steeply inclined ones. "I always say that snails are like Michael Jackson to me. You don't see how they move, but somehow gliding is happening," said Saravana Prashanth Murali Babu at the University of Southern Denmark during a presentation at the American Physical Society's March Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 4 March. Fascinated by the shelled molluscs, Saravana and his colleagues decided to build a version of a snail's single large, soft foot and use it as the basis of a robot that moves like a snail. The unique promise of'biological computers' made from living things During his presentation, Saravana explained that the team chose to build the foot from a soft material that could be inflated in segments by small pneumatic pumps.